Chapter 4: The Dream of Her
The brown paper bag sat on her kitchen counter like an accusation. Maylee ignored it. She moved through her apartment, a ghost in a museum of her own making. Her fingers trailed over the framed photos on the wall—Jess laughing at a county fair, Jess sleeping on a train, Jess squinting against the sun, a shot Maylee had taken from three benches away with a long lens. The glass was clean. She dusted them every day.
She showered again, scrubbing at the smell of the surplus store, the gym, the city. The water was scalding. It didn’t warm her.
Wrapped in a towel, she stood in her bedroom. The shadows from the floor lamp cut across the bed, making a cage of light and dark. The hum in the air wasn’t from an appliance; it was the hum of a held breath, of a mind running too fast in a silence too deep.
Her phone was dark. No messages. Jess would be in class. With Tom.
The thought was a key turning in a lock deep inside her. A cold, precise mechanism engaging.
She let the towel drop.
The air chilled her skin, raising goosebumps. She lay back on the stark black comforter, her body a pale contrast against the void. She closed her eyes. The hum filled her ears.
It wasn’t her own touch she felt. It was Jess’s.
In the theater of her mind, it was Jess’s slender, artist’s fingers that brushed over her stomach, not her own calloused ones. It was Jess’s weight that settled atop her, warm and real. Maylee could smell her—that specific cocktail of jasmine shampoo and the faint, sweet scent of her skin, like sun-warmed linen.
“You’re so tense,” fantasy-Jess whispered, her lips grazing Maylee’s ear.
A tremor ran through Maylee’s actual body. Her own hand slid down, but in her head, she was passive, being acted upon. Being claimed.
Fantasy-Jess’s mouth was on her neck, sucking a mark that would bloom purple and undeniable. Her hands were everywhere, learning the hard planes of Maylee’s abdomen, the powerful cut of her thighs. Maylee, in the bed, arched her back, a low sound tearing from her throat.
“I want to taste you,” the voice in her head murmured, husky and sure. “I want to make you come apart.”
Maylee’s fingers pushed between her own legs, slick with need. But in the fantasy, it was Jess’s tongue there. Jess’s beautiful, observant face buried in her. The image was so vivid Maylee cried out, her hips bucking off the mattress.
She saw it. Jess, between her legs, those doe eyes looking up, dark with hunger. The obscene, wet sound of her mouth. The relentless, expert flick of her tongue over Maylee’s clit, hard and fast.
“Fuck,” Maylee gasped to the empty room. “Jess… fucking yes…”
Her fingers worked in time with the phantom tongue, plunging inside herself, curling. The pleasure was a wire pulled taut, thrumming. She imagined flipping them over, pinning Jess down with her greater strength. Jess would gasp, a flicker of surprise in those green eyes, before melting into submission.
“Mine,” Maylee growled, the word raw. “You’re all fucking mine.”
The fantasy shifted. Now she was the one devouring. Pushing Jess’s thighs apart, seeing her utterly exposed, glistening and ready. Tasting her. Jess’s back would bow, her hands fisting in Maylee’s short hair, not to pull away, but to pull her closer, deeper. Maylee would drink her down, fucking her with her tongue until Jess sobbed, until she chanted Maylee’s name like a prayer gone wrong.
The climax hit her like a systemic shock. It wasn’t a wave; it was a detonation. Her whole body seized, rigid, a silent scream locked in her lungs. Lights sparked behind her eyelids. For a long, suspended moment, there was nothing but white-hot rupture.
Then the crash.
She went limp, breathing in ragged, wet gulps. The room came back in pieces—the jagged shadows, the photos watching, the metallic scent in the air now mixed with the salt of sweat and sex.
Reality was a cold sheet on her heated skin. Jess wasn’t here. Jess was across town, talking about binary code with a man who wanted her attention.
The emptiness after was vast. It was a hunger that could eat the world.
Slowly, she sat up. She walked, naked, to the kitchen. She poured a glass of water and drank it staring at the brown paper bag. The throb between her legs was fading. The throb in her mind was not.
She opened the bag. She laid the three knives on the counter. The overhead light glinted on their edges. She picked up the sleek, dark one. The grip was cool. She tested the weight. It was balanced. It felt like an extension of her own intent.
She dressed in black jeans, a dark hoodie. She pulled her hair into a tight knot. The knife went into an interior pocket she’d sewn into the hoodie herself. It lay flat and invisible against her ribs.
She drove to the community college campus as the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the concrete walkways in long, guilty shadows. She knew Jess’s schedule. The coding class let out at 7:30 PM.
She parked in a different lot, farther away. She walked with her head down, hands in pockets, just another student in the evening swell. She positioned herself near a concrete planter filled with dead shrubs, a direct sightline to the doors of the Applied Sciences building.
At 7:28, the doors burst open. A stream of people emerged, tired-looking, carrying laptops. Maylee’s pulse was a quiet, steady drumbeat.
There. Jess came out, laughing at something, her honey hair catching the last of the twilight. And beside her, a step too close, was a man. Tall, lanky, with a beanie and a goatee. Tom.
Maylee’s hand found the shape of the knife through the fabric. She didn’t move. She watched.
Tom was talking animatedly, using his hands. Jess nodded, smiling that polite, distant smile she used with acquaintances. They stopped near a bike rack. The conversation continued. Tom leaned in. Jess took a half-step back.
The wire in Maylee’s mind pulled tighter.
After what felt like an hour but was only three minutes, Jess gave a small wave and turned to walk toward the parking lot. Tom watched her go. His gaze lingered on the swing of her hips. It was a look of plain, ordinary desire. A look that contaminated her.
Maylee tracked Jess to her car, watched her drive away. Safe.
Then her eyes, cold and unblinking, returned to Tom. He was fumbling with a bike lock. He finally freed his mountain bike, swung a leg over, and pedaled off toward the student housing complexes on the east side of campus.
Maylee moved. Her steps were silent, an easy athletic stride that closed the distance without effort. She followed at a remove, a shadow merging with other shadows. He turned down a quieter path that cut between two lecture halls, a shortcut.
Her breathing was even. Her palm, where the old cut was, itched.
The path was poorly lit. His bike tires crunched on gravel. Hers did not.
He was halfway through the narrow pass when she called out, her voice friendly, ordinary.
“Hey, Tom?”
He braked, turning, one foot on the ground. Confusion on his face. “Yeah? Do I…?”
She was already upon him. The angelic smile was on her face, disarming. “Jess asked me to give you something.”
“Oh?” His confusion deepened. He didn’t know her.
Maylee’s hand came out of her pocket. Not empty. The sleek, dark steel flashed dully under the single security light.
His eyes widened. Understanding arrived a fatal second too late.
“It’s a message,” Maylee said softly, and the knife went in.
It was easier than the last time. More efficient. The blade found the space between his ribs as if it were coming home. There was a wet, puncturing sound. A hot gasp bloomed in the cold air between them.
He made a choked, gurgling noise, his hands fluttering to his chest, to the handle now protruding from him. His bike clattered to the ground. She held him up for a moment, close, like a lover. She looked into his dying eyes.
“You don’t look at her,” she whispered, her lips almost touching his ear. “You don’t talk to her. You don’t fucking exist.”
She stepped back. He folded to the gravel.
She watched for thirty seconds. The twitching stopped. The light in his eyes went out. She leaned down, wrapped her hand in the fabric of his hoodie, and pulled the knife free. It came with a soft, sucking sound. She wiped the blade clean on his jeans, methodically, on both sides. She returned it to the interior pocket. It was warm.
She stepped over the body, over the fallen bicycle. She walked back the way she came, her pace unchanged. The night absorbed her. By the time she reached her car, her breathing was calm. The wire in her mind had gone slack. The world was clean again.
Her phone buzzed as she started the engine.
Jess (8:17 PM):
Class was a drag. Ugh. Want to come over? I have wine and a bad movie.
Maylee looked at her hands on the steering wheel. Clean. Steady. She typed back, a small, true smile touching her lips.
Maylee (8:18 PM):
I’d love to. Be there in 20.
She drove toward Jess’s apartment, the warmth of the knife against her ribs a constant, comforting pressure. A secret shared between her and the night. She rolled the window down, let the cold air wash over her face. She could still smell the jasmine shampoo. She could still taste the salt on her skin.
The hunger was quiet, for now. Fed. But she knew it would return. It always did. And she would be ready.